Veterans may assume policing role

The IRA has not gone away. It has, as republicans are at pains to point out, simply gone into a "new mode". What exactly that new mode will be may decide whether Northern Ireland is truly about to emerge from this dark chapter of its history.

Already a complex network of back channels and behind-the-scenes organisations exist that give some inkling of what the new, demilitarised IRA will look like. One model might be that of Coiste na n-Iarchimí, a welfare group for ex-prisoners whose name roughly translates with more than a hint of republican black humour as The Graduates. One of its members is Brendan "Bik" McFarlane, a leader of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze prison and the IRA's officer commanding during a subsequent mass escape in which a prison officer was killed.

McFarlane, sentenced to life for his part in the Bayardo bar massacre early in the Troubles, is typical of the republican ex-prisoners who see themselves as the men people come to when they feel under threat from loyalist attacks or more often from "antisocial elements" within their own community.

It is not hard to see how Coiste - or other groups like it - could evolve into the gatekeepers between republican communities and the new reformed police force once it has Sinn Fein backing. At all the flashpoints this summer, senior IRA figures like McFarlane could be seen wearing stewards' bibs calming stonethrowers, or taking petrol bombs from youths.

At earlier riots, the Shankill bomber Sean Kelly also acted as a restraining influence. Very often the police have openly praised these high-flying paramilitaries. Getting that credit is all-important to these veteran republicans.

One man likely to play a pivotal role is Bobby Storey - named in the Commons as the head of IRA intelligence and the man behind the Northern Bank robbery - who is particularly close to Gerry Adams. Whether men like Storey can adapt to their new role as gamekeepers after a lifetime of poaching - or whether other agendas are at work - remains to be seen.

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